In a recent server system, a hard disk drive (HDD) is generally redundant with redundant arrays of inexpensive disks (RAID), which makes it possible to replace a HDD while maintaining data without stopping the system. Thus, there have been increasing demands of users who use a redundant HDD to make a preventive replacement of a HDD before there actually occurs a failure or a performance degradation.
When there occurs a failure in a HDD, a media error in which data is not successfully read occurs due to a failure in a magnetic head. In general, when there only occurs a media error in a HDD, data can be read and written by performing a retrial, so the HDD is not in a failure state, and a light emitting diode (LED) that reports an error in the HDD does not light up.
However, if the media error occurs frequently, a retrial of an access to a HDD will be performed many times, which results in degrading a performance in the access to a HDD. Users who use a redundant HDD with RAID want to make a replacement of a HDD before the media error occurs frequently to cause the performance degradation.
Conventionally, in order to avoid a performance degradation due to the frequent occurrence of this media error, software that checks a media error of a HDD at specified time intervals, and brings the HDD offline so as to remove the HDD is operated on an Operating System (OS).
Further, a method is known that checks a media error using a RAID controller (see, for example, Patent Document 1).
There exist many types or versions of OSes used in an existing server system. When software that checks a media error is not operated on a specific OS, a media error of a HDD will not be checked if the specific OS is used. Thus, there is a need to cause the software that checks a media error of a HDD to operate for each OS or version, which results in high costs.
Further, in the method described in Patent Document 1, a specific RAID card that has a function of checking a media error is used.
Patent Document 1: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-301714
Patent Document 2: Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2010-191762